Also, the idea of "planned obscolescence" goes out the window when you realize something:

We used to get nothing but SP games. SP games are PERFECT for this because of the same reason books are perfect. People generally won't want to re-play/re-read the same story hundreds of time (I am not most people :p).

Now? Now most games are multiplayer first (or primarily) with SP considered "training". And the only way to make a multiplayer game obsolete is to make a superior sequel. Otherwise, I'll keep playing CTF-Face, thank you very much.

07-12-2012, 07:56 PM

NathanH

Quote:

Originally Posted by gundato

And the only way to make a multiplayer game obsolete is to make a superior sequel.

Nah, you just include Diablo3-DRM into your game.

07-12-2012, 07:58 PM

Jesus_Phish

Quote:

Originally Posted by NathanH

Nah, you just include Diablo3-DRM into your game.

His statement is still correct. Diablo 3 is not a superior game than Diablo 2. Had it been, people would've been more forgiven of it's stupid DRM.

07-12-2012, 08:00 PM

gundato

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jesus_Phish

His statement is still correct. Diablo 3 is not a superior game than Diablo 2. Had it been, people would've been more forgiven of it's stupid DRM.

I think his point is more that you use a restrictive as crap DRM model so that people HAVE to upgrade. Sort of like what EA does with most multiplayer games it can.

That is true, but you tend to get a LOT of backlash if the sequel is not of comparable or better quality.

07-12-2012, 08:02 PM

NathanH

That's true, although I fear that the backlash will eventually go away and people will just get used to it and stop complaining. And even with the backlash Blizzard are still bathing in a pool of Diablo 3 doubloons.

07-12-2012, 08:06 PM

gundato

Quote:

Originally Posted by NathanH

That's true, although I fear that the backlash will eventually go away and people will just get used to it and stop complaining. And even with the backlash Blizzard are still bathing in a pool of Diablo 3 doubloons.

Diablo 3 is special. A lot of the Diablo 1/2 fans are angry, but they also have either already moved on to a different clickfest or are willing to put up with it out of love of Blizzard. But Diablo 2 came out over a decade ago... do you honestly think the majority of those Diablo 3 players ever played the original (sequel)?

Which means it becomes a matter of taste. Do they like approach A or approach B? The correct answer is Torchlight 2

07-12-2012, 08:08 PM

NathanH

The correct answer is always Torchlight 2.

07-12-2012, 08:32 PM

b0rsuk

Quote:

Originally Posted by gundato

Also, the idea of "planned obscolescence" goes out the window when you realize something:

We used to get nothing but SP games. SP games are PERFECT for this because of the same reason books are perfect. People generally won't want to re-play/re-read the same story hundreds of time (I am not most people :p).

Now? Now most games are multiplayer first (or primarily) with SP considered "training". And the only way to make a multiplayer game obsolete is to make a superior sequel. Otherwise, I'll keep playing CTF-Face, thank you very much.

Many old 2D games were tile-based, which made procedural content generation easy. This significantly increased replayablity. Civilization, Alpha Centauri (voxel terrain and vehicles), Master of Magic, Master of Orion, X-COM. Even without procedural generation and random generators, tile-based games are very easy to make maps and levels for. Heroes of Might and Magic 1-4, even Boulder Dash. Any game with an editor. Even DooM/Heretic have random level generators these days. Tile-based games are extremely modular due to their nature.

08-12-2012, 03:54 AM

soldant

Quote:

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

Many old 2D games were tile-based, which made procedural content generation easy.

Many old 2D games looked horrible and needed 20 pages in the manual to describe all the symbols.

Quote:

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

Even DooM/Heretic have random level generators these days.

And SLIGE maps are horrible and nobody wants to play them, because a computer does a shit job compared to a half-way competent human mapper.

You are entirely aware that procedural generation is entirely possible with 3D games, right? We're not necessarily at the point where we can do it on the fly, but you can achieve it to an extent. XCOM for example had a bunch of blocks that could be assembled to form maps. You could do that with 3D assets but you might have issues getting it to all line up properly and play together nicely. It's not something that is impossible to solve.

08-12-2012, 04:04 AM

gundato

Quote:

Originally Posted by soldant

Many old 2D games looked horrible and needed 20 pages in the manual to describe all the symbols.

And SLIGE maps are horrible and nobody wants to play them, because a computer does a shit job compared to a half-way competent human mapper.

You are entirely aware that procedural generation is entirely possible with 3D games, right? We're not necessarily at the point where we can do it on the fly, but you can achieve it to an extent. XCOM for example had a bunch of blocks that could be assembled to form maps. You could do that with 3D assets but you might have issues getting it to all line up properly and play together nicely. It's not something that is impossible to solve.

There were a few "proof of concept" procedurally generated maps for UT2k4. They worked on the principle of a bunch of blocks that were aligned based on movers and RNGs and they had no support for bots, but they were pretty cool. Complete crap to play on though.

08-12-2012, 06:39 AM

Internet

Quote:

Originally Posted by gundato

There were a few "proof of concept" procedurally generated maps for UT2k4. They worked on the principle of a bunch of blocks that were aligned based on movers and RNGs and they had no support for bots, but they were pretty cool. Complete crap to play on though.

Don't forget about Hellgate London.

08-12-2012, 09:42 AM

b0rsuk

I was talking about the Oblige map generator, which is quite a bit better than SLIGE. The v3 line is somewhat limited (for example all levels generated are, uh... linear) but playable. The v4 line is more advanced and generates rooms with multiple exits, but so far it's unfinished in many ways and not so good so far.http://oblige.sourceforge.net/

Yet for some reason map generators and procedural generation is a lot less common in 3D era. It's possible, but rarer. Certainly there's a correlation of some sort. And don't forget destructable environment. It was easy to do in 2D era, but these days it's a rare and revered feature. When it's available, it's in the form of "destructable walls" or pre-defined buildings which can be damaged. Everything else can't.

08-12-2012, 12:37 PM

soldant

Quote:

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

I was talking about the Oblige map generator, which is quite a bit better than SLIGE.

And they still look terrible. Unless you've got a desperate need for 1994 style maps, but nobody does.

Quote:

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

Yet for some reason map generators and procedural generation is a lot less common in 3D era. It's possible, but rarer.

Procedural generation is very common in the 3D era. It's not often done at runtime, and seldom used for maps, but it's possible. It's probably possible for example that the new XCOM could have a bunch of pre-fab blocks (much like the original) that it could lay down in random order with specific rules. It's not as easy as for a 2D grid, but it's not impossible. Procedurally generated assets are prevalent in games today, and a lot of people aren't pleased with them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

Certainly there's a correlation of some sort.

It's technology and problem solving. A sprite is an entirely different kettle of fish to a 3D mesh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

And don't forget destructable environment. It was easy to do in 2D era, but these days it's a rare and revered feature. When it's available, it's in the form of "destructable walls" or pre-defined buildings which can be damaged. Everything else can't.

That's generally a tech limitation because processing all that in a realistic way can be pretty challenging. But even then you complain about "destructible walls" when really that's not that much different to how things were in the 2D era. Take XCOM again - walls only really had three states, which were intact, damaged, and destroyed. That's not very different to what the new XCOM does today. You also had ridiculous situations where an upper storey was standing with a tiny corner still intact, because the engine couldn't deal with that kind of thing. Some things were indestructible for gameplay reasons.

Otherwise you're right that 3D destruction of walls etc is difficult without resorting to the cut-out style stuff, but that's to do with the nature of how meshes are rendered. In a world of infinite processing power we could use voxels, but given that Euclideon have effectively done bugger all since their "OMG VOXELS" announcement a few years ago, that's not likely to happen any time soon.

Fun fact - the Euclideon office isn't too far from where I live. Nothing really seems to be going on.

08-12-2012, 03:16 PM

b0rsuk

Quote:

Originally Posted by soldant

And they still look terrible. Unless you've got a desperate need for 1994 style maps, but nobody does.

"Desperate" is not the word I'd use, but I like 1994 style maps. Alien Vendetta is my favourite PWAD. I especially dislike ZDoom, because it reminds me of WoG for HoMM games. It's a clusterfuck of features, no rhyme or reason. Newer ZDoom versions reek of inferiority complex. They add features Quake (and later) games were known for, and this makes levels play very differently. Navigation is more convoluted and slower.

Sector-based lighting has a different look, different style to it. DooM was designed with cartoon style in mind (yes, because of technical limitations of the time) but that doesn't mean it's not a style. Sector-based shadows and lights (like in map04 of Doom2) are much like a cartoon, each shadow is handcrafted. Using a relatively small number of sectors is using them as intended, because they are meant to represent areas of different (gameplay) properties. Light is only one such property and purely cosmetic.

So claims that nobody likes 1994 style WADs are plain false. And who are you to speak for everyone ?